Mammoth Tooth Discovered on California Beach: A Rare Fossil Find

Last weekend, a giant tooth, which once belonged to a mammoth, was discovered on the Rio Del Mar beach in the north of the state of California.

A tourist saw the tooth and photographed it on the beach, obviously without realizing what she was looking at, writes CBS News.

Because after she had taken the picture of the 10,000-year-old fossil, she moved on.

Discovered on social media

The tourist discovered the rare fossil last Friday.

She posted a photo of the 12-inch-long tooth on social media, where it was recognized by Wayne Thompson, paleontology collections advisor at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.

– This is a tooth from a mammoth, and an extremely important find. Call me when you get a chance, Thompson wrote in response to her social media post, according to a news release from the museum.

The mammoth lived in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America during the Ice Age and suddenly disappeared from the earth 4,000 years ago, probably as a result of a combination of climate change and human predation, writes Large Norwegian encyclopedia.

Stumbled over the tooth

When Thompson went to the beach where the tourist had originally seen the massive tooth, it had disappeared.

But the fossil was eventually located again, to the museum’s great joy.

The museum says that a local resident, Jim Smith, came across the tooth during a run the day after they shared the Facebook post. Smith then called the museum to report the find, after seeing pictures of the fossil on the news.

– I was so excited to get that call. Jim told us he had stumbled upon it during one of his regular jogs, but wasn’t sure what he had found until he saw a photo of the tooth on the news, Liz Broughton at the museum told CBS.

Pregnant man makes a fuss

– Only two other specimens of mammoth fossils have been recorded locally, and both are here in our collection. This new discovery is of great importance for our developing understanding of life in the area during the last ice age, the museum wrote in a Facebook– post shared on Monday.

The museum intends to make the tooth available for scientific study in addition to displaying it in an exhibition.